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“You did?” That surprised her. “Did Emmett send you?”
“Not exactly. But he told us what you were trying to accomplish—documenting nesting behavior for a professor who plans to write up a paper on it. I thought that sounded like interesting work. I had a little spare time, so I decided to find out if you’re okay.”
“That’s thoughtful.” Especially when he didn’t know her from Adam. Nor did she know him, although under different circumstances, she’d be happy to get acquainted. “I’m doing fine, thanks.”
“How about the eagle babies? Are they all right?”
“So far.” Apparently he was curious about the eagles. She could understand that. They were fascinating creatures.
“Good. That’s good.” A fly started buzzing around him, followed by a couple of bees. He waved them away. “They’re after the sweet smell, I guess.”
“I’m sure.” He’d probably hoped to visit her platform and get a bird’s-eye view of the eagles. Time to stop being vain and let him do that. “Listen, did you want to come up and take a look at the nest?”
“I’d love to, but I’m all sticky and attracting bugs.”
“So maybe you could wash some of it off in the stream.”
“Yeah, that might work.”
“I’ll come down. I know the best spot along the bank for washing up.”
He smiled. “I’d like that. Thanks.”
“Be right there.” Wow, that was some smile he had going on. It almost made her forget that she looked like something the cat dragged in. She’d read that first impressions carried a tremendous amount of weight. As she started down the rope ladder, she hoped he’d make allowances.
DESPITE HAVING BEEN drenched in sticky, sweet green stuff, Luke wanted a look at Naomi Perkins. He hoped she’d be worth the possibility that he’d ruined his best hat. Had he known she possessed a hair-trigger startle response, he would have called out to her long before he’d reached her tree.
But as he’d approached, he’d assumed the platform was deserted. That was the only explanation for the total silence that had greeted him. If she’d been there, he’d reasoned, she would have greeted him.
That was the accepted way out here in the West. When a person laid claim to a portion of the great outdoors, be it with a campfire or a platform in a tree, they welcomed incoming riders. He was an incoming rider. She had to have noticed him. Yet for some reason she’d played possum.
So it was with great interest that he watched her climb down the rope ladder. First appeared a serviceable pair of hiking boots. He might have figured that.
Then came…Sweet Lord, she had an ass worthy of an exotic dancer. A man could forgive a whole bucket of that green glop landing on him for a chance to watch Naomi Perkins descend a ladder. He no longer cared about the sad condition of his hat, even though that Stetson had set him back a considerable amount of money.
She wore her tan T-shirt pulled out, not tucked in, but even so, he could tell that her slender waist did credit to the rest of her. Her breasts shifted invitingly as she descended, and by the time she’d reached the ground, he was glad he’d ridden out here.
Besides looking good coming down the ladder, she’d accomplished the climb with dexterity. She seemed perfectly at home out here by herself. He admired that kind of self-sufficiency. He’d guessed she might be that type of woman from the moment Emmett had described the job she was doing.
She’d put her honey-blond hair up in a careless ponytail. He could hardly expect some elaborate style from someone who’d been camping for days. Then she turned around, and he was lost.
Eyes bluer than morning glories, a heart-shaped face and pink lips that formed a perfect Cupid’s bow. He’d never thought about his ideal woman, but from the fierce pounding of his heart, he suspected he was looking at her.
Before coming to the Jackson Hole area to work at the Last Chance eight months ago, he’d spent a couple of years in Sacramento. Although that city wasn’t Hollywood by any means, he’d met plenty of women, young and old, who subscribed to plastic surgery and Botox beauty regimes. And the makeup—they wouldn’t walk out the door without it. Some slept in it.
Standing before him was someone who wore not an ounce of makeup. She had an expressive face that obviously hadn’t been nipped and tucked. In her khaki shorts and tan shirt, she seemed ready for adventure, like a sidekick for Indiana Jones. He didn’t run across women like Naomi all that often. He felt like hoisting this treasure up onto his saddle and riding off with her into the sunset.
Not literally, of course. Sunset wasn’t for several hours. Besides, that dramatic gesture sounded good in theory, but in reality he wasn’t a good candidate for riding into the sunset with a woman on his horse. That implied that he’d made some pretty big promises to her.
He was a rolling stone who didn’t make those kinds of promises. He traveled light. Even so, he wouldn’t mind spending some time with the luscious Miss Perkins when she wasn’t busy watching eagles.
Now that she was on the ground, he dismounted. “I’d shake your hand, but I’m afraid we’d be stuck together for eternity. My hands are covered with that green stuff.”
“Understood.”
He waved away more flies. “Time to get it off. Thanks for coming down to keep me company.” Leading his horse, he started toward the stream a few yards away.
“It’s the least I could do.” She fell into step beside him. Their boots crunched the pine needles underfoot and sent up a sharp, clean scent that helped counteract the sweetness of the energy drink.
“Your folks own the Shoshone Diner, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I like the food there.”
“Me, too. Now you’re making me hungry for my mom’s meat loaf.”
“I would be, too, if I’d been trying to survive on that green junk. Listen, I didn’t mean to scare you by calling to you just now. I thought nobody was up there, but I wanted to make sure.” He glanced over at her to see what she might have to say for herself on that score.
Her cheeks turned pink. “I didn’t realize you’d come out here because of the eagles. I assumed you’d ride on by.”
“You didn’t think someone riding by would stop and say howdy?”
“Sure, if they knew I was up there.”
“So you were hiding from me?”
She nodded.
“Why?” He had a terrible thought. “Did you think I might hurt you?”
“No. I’m used to taking care of myself. I have bear spray and I know karate.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” It was the way he’d imagined she would be, resourceful and ready for anything. Very attractive traits. “But it doesn’t explain why you were hiding.”
She gestured to her herself and laughed. “Because I’m a hot mess!”
“You are?” He stared at her in confusion, unable to figure out what she meant.
“Okay, now you’re just being nice, and I appreciate it, but I’ve been out here for a week. I’ve slept in a tent, washed up in the stream and put on clothes that were stuffed in a backpack. And then there’s my hair.”
“Okay, your hair might be sort of supercasual.” He reached over, pulled a twig out of her ponytail and dropped it to the ground. “But the rest of you is just fine.” He didn’t know her well enough to tell her she looked sexy as hell. Her rumpled, accessible presentation worked for him way better than a slinky outfit. He related to someone who could survive without modern conveniences.
“Supercasual.” She chuckled. “That’s a great euphemism for trashed.”
“I’ve seen celebrities whose hair looked way worse than yours, and it was fixed like that on purpose.”
“What a gentlemanly thing to say.” She pointed through the trees. “Right over there is a nice sandy spot. It’s where I go in.”
“Perfect.” When he reached the bank of the creek, he let Smudge, the Last Chance gelding he usually rode, have a drink.
She came to stand beside him. “You’re right, Luke. I overreacted to the idea of having company.”
“I’m surprised you’d be so embarrassed.” He finished watering the horse, backed him up and dropped the reins to ground-tie him. Then he turned toward Naomi. “Like I said, you look fine to me.”
“I wouldn’t have been embarrassed if Emmett had come out, or Jack. But I’d never met you.” She shrugged. “I guess the vanity thing kicked in.”
He gazed at her. “How did you know I wasn’t Emmett or Jack?” Then he realized she must have binoculars. “Oh. You were spying on me.”
Her blush deepened, giving her away.
Gradually he began to understand the issue. She’d used her binoculars to identify the person riding toward her lookout spot, which was natural. But when she’d discovered he was a stranger, she’d worried about making a bad impression. That was flattering.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I wore my best hat out here on purpose. I wanted to make a good impression on you.”
“You did? Why?”
“Well…” He started unsnapping his sticky shirt, starting with the cuffs on his sleeves. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, that you were this cute blonde who’d just moved back home after doing wildlife research for the state of Florida. They said you wrestled alligators and captured pythons and such.” He unfastened the snaps running down the front of his shirt and pulled the tail out of his jeans. He felt her gaze on him. Well, that was okay. He wasn’t ashamed of his body.
She seemed to get a kick out of the talk about her, though. “You’ll have to forgive people for exaggerating,” she said with a smile. “I didn’t wrestle alligators. Sometimes I had to snare them and move them away from populated areas. But I never dealt with a python by myself.”
“Even so, here you are out in the wilderness studying a nest of eagles. In my book, that makes you unusual.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not that exciting.”
“I’m not disappointed at all. I’d have been disappointed to come out here and find you using a battery-powered hair dryer and painting your nails.” If she was paying attention, she’d figure out he was attracted to her outdoor lifestyle.
“Thank you. I appreciate your saying that.”
“On the other hand, I’m sure I failed to make a good impression on you, swearing and carrying on like I did. Sorry about that.” He stripped off his shirt and wadded it up in preparation for dunking it in the water.
“No need to be sorry. I would’ve reacted the same way if I’d been showered with sticky green stuff.”
Something in her voice made him pause and glance at her. To his delight, she was looking at him with a definite gleam in her eye. When he caught her at it, she blushed and turned away.
All righty, then. It appeared that taking off his shirt had been a very good idea.
2
IF NAOMI HAD realized that spilling her energy drink would make Luke take off his shirt, she would have done it on purpose. Pecs and abs like his belonged in a calendar. And unlike the shaved versions featured in muscle-building magazines, Luke had manly chest hair that highlighted his flat nipples and traced a path to the metal edge of his belt buckle.
But he’d caught her looking. He hadn’t seemed to mind. In fact, she’d spotted a flicker of amusement in his eyes, which were, thank you, God, velvet brown.
“I’ll go rinse this out.”
“Good idea.” Now, there was an idiotic response. Rinsing out his shirt wasn’t merely a good idea. It was the whole idea, the reason they’d walked to the stream in the first place.
She watched him kneel on the embankment and dunk his shirt in the water. The stream wasn’t large, no more than fifteen feet across at its widest point, but it ran deep enough in spots for fish to thrive, which was why the eagles were nesting here.
But she wasn’t thinking about eagles now. Instead she gazed at the broad, muscled back of Luke Griffin and wondered what it would be like to feel those muscles move under her palms. Having such thoughts about a virtual stranger wasn’t like her.
Except he didn’t feel like a stranger. He’d come out here because of an interest in the eagles and curiosity about the woman studying them. Instead of being turned off by her rumpled appearance, he seemed to prefer it. That made him the sort of man she’d like to get to know.
At first he’d been understandably upset about getting doused with the energy drink, but apparently he was a good-natured sort of guy who rolled with the punches. Anyone would think he’d had to wash out his clothes in a stream numerous times from the efficiency with which he swirled the shirt in the water and wrung it out.
Then he set it on a nearby rock. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a blue bandanna and plunged it into the water before rubbing his face, chest and shoulders with it.
Naomi felt like a voyeur standing there while he washed up. She could offer to help, but she wasn’t sure that was appropriate, either. What could she do, wash his back?
At last he stood, his dripping shirt in one hand and his soaked bandanna in the other. “I’m considering whether I should put my hat in the water or not.”
“I can’t advise you.” Wow, he was beautiful. She had a tough time remembering her name while he faced her, his chest glistening with droplets of water. Evaluating the best procedure for cleaning his hat was beyond her mental capabilities at the moment.
“I’m doing it. It can’t get any worse.” He walked toward her with the shirt and the bandanna. “Maybe you could find a tree branch for these.”
“Sure.” She took them, although she wondered what his plan might be. Hanging something to dry implied sticking around awhile. Was that what he had in mind?
Maybe he only wanted his shirt to get dry enough that it wouldn’t feel clammy when he put it on, but that would take more than ten minutes. Fine with her. She wouldn’t mind spending more time with this sexy cowboy. She found a fairly level branch for both the shirt and the bandanna. As a veteran camper, she was used to such maneuvers.
As she finished hanging up his stuff, he came back holding his saturated hat. “At least it won’t attract flies on the way home.” He looked around, found a convenient twig sticking out of a tree trunk and hung his hat on it. “I need the bandanna back. One more chore.” Grabbing it, he returned to the stream and soaked the bandanna.
Naomi wasn’t sure what his goal was until he walked over to his horse and started wiping its neck. Apparently the energy drink had anointed the brown-and-white paint, too. She gave Luke points for wanting to get the stuff off to keep the animal from being pestered by flies, as well.
His considerate gesture also provided her with quite a show. She wondered if he had any idea how his muscles rippled in the dappled sunlight while he worked on that horse. If she could have taken a video, it would be an instant hit on YouTube—gorgeous guy demonstrates his love of animals. What could be sweeter?
Finally he rinsed out the bandanna again and returned it to the branch where his shirt hung. “I think that takes care of the worst of it.”
“You’re causing me to rethink my consumption of energy drinks. I never dreamed one little bottle could create such a disaster.”
He smiled at her. “Ah, it wasn’t so bad. The cold water feels good.”
“I know it does. That stream was a lifesaver this week when the temperatures kicked up.”
“I’ll bet. Now that you mention it, you look a little flushed. You can use my bandanna if you—” He paused and chuckled. “Never mind. You probably don’t want to rinse your face with the bandanna I just used on my horse.”
“I wouldn’t care about that. But don’t worry about me. I’m used to being hot.”
His sudden laughter made the brown-and-white paint lift his head and stare at them. “I’m not touching that line.”
“Oh, dear God.” She felt a new blush coming on. “I didn’t mean it like that.” But he’d taken it like that. To her surprise, this beautiful shirtless cowboy was flirting with her. What a rush.
“Now you really look as if you could use a splash of cold water.”
“It’s my blond coloring. I blush at the drop of a hat.” Or the drop of a shirt.
